The LHC, located
underneath the Franco-Swiss border, accelerates streams of protons
along a 17-mile long circular track, at speeds close to the speed of
light. The proton beams, contained by powerful superconducting
electromagnets, travel in opposite directions and cross at
intersections. At these intersections violent collisions occur,
which are logged and analyzed by advanced detectors.

Now the
scientists with European Organization for Nuclear Research (better
known by its French acronym CERN) are pumping up the energy of the
beams and have set an incredible
record. They have upped the beam energy to 1.18 trillion
electron volts at 2344 GMT on Sunday. Before that, the beams
had been operating at 450 billion electron volts to verify that
everything was working properly.

To put this in context, a
mosquito's entire body has approximately 1 TeV in kinetic energy.
Mosquitoes, though, have approximately 1023 to 1024
atoms in them, each with one or more protons. The LHC puts the
equivalent energy of these countless trillions of atoms into a single
proton, an incredible accomplishment.

The LHC now stands as
king of the particle accelerator world, deposing the former best, the
Tevatron. Located within the U.S. near Batvia, Illinois, the
Tevatron was capable of operation at 0.98 trillion electron volts
since 2001. It is likely to be soon shut down, now that the LHC
appears ready to take over duties as the world's strongest particle
accelerator.

CERN's director general Rolf Heuer was pleased
with the news but remained reserved, stating, "We are still
coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is
going. It is fantastic. However, we are continuing to take it
step-by-step, and there is still a lot to do before we start physics
in 2010. I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then."

In
2010, the LHC is expected to pump the beams up to an unbelievable 7
TeV -- over 7 times the previous record. With collisions at a
net energy of 14 TeV, the accelerator is expected to unlock some of
the universe's strangest mysteries, such as the detection of the long
theorized Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle".
That's not too shabby for a particle accelerator with the prospective
net energy of 14 mosquitoes.

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What country are you from that has 18% unemployment? This thing wasn't paid by just Switzerland, CERN has 20 European members and this thing was paid for by 100 some countries. Last I checked EU had something like 8-9% unemployment.

The US has plenty of on time scientific projects, send your hate somewhere else.

And how is it hateful to say the government is regularly behind on projects? The last time I checked, increased costs due to delays and poor planning is the first thing we cry about. Because it raises our taxes.

WTF are you talking about? I wasn't comparing the US to the EU, I was comparing the US to Switzerland.

quote: CERN is located in Switzerland . The economy is very strong there ( Switzerland ), with unemployment less than 4%. Ours is around 18%, so yeah, according to him ( Rolf Heuer ) the economy is strong. :-)

Sure, the EU paid for it, but I'm pretty sure Rolf Heuer wasn't talking about all of Europe when he said the economy is strong. It damn sure isn't, except for Switzerland.

Switzerland is a very rich country. They have plenty of money. Don't mention that most of that money came by trafficking, money laundering and so on by the largest criminal organizations, and thanks to their secretive (and hoping that will be declared illegal soon) banking system.

The money may be in Switzerland but it's not being made there... how about you hunt the criminals instead of the banks, you think that criminals don't have other places where to put money? I see more than one country that would be more than happy to get money in their banks regardless where it comes from.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and its parent, United States Department of Labor, disagrees. Unemployment statistics consist of six classifications, U1-U6. U3 is the "official unemployment statistic" presented to the public as most people don't understand the other stats.

The government views underemployment to be just as bad as unemployment. The US is a capitalist country; why offer unemployment benefits? So that the economy doesn't go down the toilet. You get no wages, you can't pay your bills. You don't pay your bills, the next guy can't pay his bills. Domino effect.

The same situation exists for underemployment. In order for the economy to function people need to spend. The less money they have the less they spend, and the economy goes down the toilet. A person who used to make $100K suddenly has to make do with 20 hours a week at $10 an hour, if the gods are kind. $200 a week is ~$10K annually, 10% of the original salary. There's less taxes for the government, less cash to spend on necessities, and only the foolish spend their pennies on luxuries. The government feels unemployment and underemployment must both be tackled if the economy is to thrive. Our current situation is basically the chicken-and-egg problem of "I have no money, so I can't spend" and "I am not making any money, so I can't hire".

From one of the sources below:U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)